HYol. XVI. «NOVEMBER, 1899. = ss 


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__ ** No, I cannot leave you yet.” 

‘Ts sweet to love,” she said musingly. 

_ “And to be loved, he added, ‘‘ where the ocean breezes 
j plow,” 


A SONG. 
, BY x———_.. 


Come, drink to the dying year, 
And drink to the dying day, 
And drink to all that is past, 
And all that is passing away. 


For what is life but a song, 
To sing what way you will? 
Come, choose us a merry tune then; 
Tell hastening time ‘be still.’ 


So hush the voice of your heart and mine, 
_ For their speech brings only pain, 

Shut your ears to misery’s call 

_ And let the hag knock in vain. 


DG he ay 
; For one short hour be merry, 


Forget there’s more of life; 
To-morrow brings the struggle, 
The care and the ceaseless strife. 


Then crown the beaker with garlands, 
And put your lips to the brim, 
_And drink to undying beauty, 
_ And eyes that never grow dim; 


fi 


And drink to the happy-go-lucky ; 
Ny Hurrah for the end of strife! 
. , _ _Here’s to all that’s merry and happy; 
Forget there is more of life. 


SCOTCH TRAITS IN THOMAS CARLYLE.* 


BY L. R. WILSON. 


something more than a mere superficial study of the 

exterior page is required. His character and pur-— 
poses must be viewed in the light of his hereditary ten- 
dencies and environment. The man and his time interact 
upon each other and must be examined in their mutual 
relations. Just as in Art the most harmonious, pleasing 
effect of a picture is secured only when the bright, attrac- 
tive central figures are toned down and blended with the 
hazy side lights and the dark shadowy back ground, so in 
Literature, which is an art, complete harmony can be ob- 
tained only when all the minor, hidden details are taken 
into consideration. 

The picture we have before us is that of the life of the 
grim, rugged, massive Carlyle, the Hebraic prophet, who 
stands out giving utterance to his praise of that which is 
true and noble and boldly denouncing that which is untrue 
and ignoble. Let us turn to it and investigate, in the 
Scotch youth, the small beginnings of the stern seer who 
forged, later, his ponderous thoughts in the silent seclu- 
sion of Chelsea. 

Carlyle began life in the unpretentious Scotch village of 
Kcclefechan, a place of no other special uote, whatever. 
It was simply the home of a few Scotch land-owners and 
their peasant renters,—not the place seemingly, to produce 
the spiritual prophet of the English nation, but rather, 
the earnest, persistent, religious tiller of the soil. 

His father was of the strong, self-made class of men. 
Born of poor peasant parents, his boyhood was hard and 
trying. At an early age he became the apprentice of a 
first class mason under whose direction he carefully trained 


*This essay won for Mr. Wilson the Hume Medal,—Ed. 


ls thoroughly appreciate the great work of an author 


¢«~ 


Scotch Traits in Thomas Carlyle 23 


himself to be a master workman. Reserved, dignified, at 
times impetuous, persevering, and intensely religious, he 
worked and built bridges and walls that continued to en- 
dure even when his strong, busy hand had entered upon its 
eternal rest. 

His formal education, lasting only for three months, was 
very poor. He was, however, a man of much good sense 
and possessed a mind, which although not carefully train- 
ed, was deep of insight, quick of action, and accurately 
logical. His great teacher was Nature, and the lesson 
taught him by her was to work—to work honestly and 
continually for that which was elevating and praiseworthy. 
The lesson once learned, he gave his entire strength to 
that which his hands found to do, 

His religious views were firmly based on Calvinistic doc- 
trine. ‘They were unshaken and real. ‘‘ Religion was the 
polar star of his being, and without it he would have been 
nothing. Although rude and uncultivated in many other 
respects, it made him and kept him ‘in all points a man’.” 
The deep faith in God as ruler and director of all things, 
which finds itself most firmly rooted in the Scotch heart, 
was preeminently his, For him God’s will was supreme. 
God did all things for the good of those who put their 
trust in Him. 

Carlyle’s mother was a tender, gentle, loving Scotch 
Presbyterian, in whom the religious teachings of her 
country were naturally deep seated. Hers was the unques- 
tioning, instinctive faith of a woman who knew that her 
Redeemer liveth, and who never doubted that God’s all- 
wise care directed all things. In her was to be found that 
sensitive conscience which is especially characteristic of 
the Scotch people, and which, perhaps, can be said to exist 
in the true New England girl whom Hawthorne pictures 
in the ‘‘Marble Faun,”—a conscience which cannot brook 
evil in others and which is constantly picking itself to 
pieces and setting itself aright in the sight of God. 

Such were the parents of Carlyle. Such the father and 


24 University Magazine 


mother from whom he received the broad, sound founda- 
tion upon which he built so grandly. 

In such a home his life was moulded and set into a form: 
which it never wholly lost. Its teaching with regard to 
obedience, to work, to truth and partly to religion, was 
lasting. Its atmosphere, though possibly a little unpleas- 
ant toa boy of will, was, at all events, ‘‘ wholesome and 
Safe.” ; 

As to his early training we are not left to mere conject- 
ure as he himself has given us a terse, graphic picture of 
one of his old teachers. Adam Hope, the dreaded, stern, 
English master, stands out in bold relief, and in him we 
find Scotch qualities that are characteristic of Carlyle him- 
self. Carlyle says: ‘‘He was a man humanly contem- 
ptuous of the world, and valued ‘suffrages’ at a most low 
figure in comparison. I should judge him an extremely 
proud man; for the rest, an inexorable logician, a Calvinist 
at all points, and Burgher Scotch Seceder to the back-bone. 
He did not know very much, but still a good something. 
But what he did profess or imagine himself to know, he 
knew in every fibre, and to the very bottom. A more rig- 
orously solid teacher of the young: idea, so far as he could 
carry it, you might have searched for throughout the world 
in vain. Self-delusion, half-knowledge, sham, instead of 
teality, could not get existence in his presence. He was 
a praise and a glory to the well-doing boys, a beneficent 
terror to the ill-doing or dishonest, block-head sort; and 
did what was in his power to educe and maize available the 
net amount of faculty discernible in each, and separate . 
firmly the known from the unknown or misknown, in those 
young heads.” This is the teacher who found in Thomas 
Carlyle an apt scholar, and who left with him impressions 
which sank into his life and made their appearance in bold, 
unmistakable signs in later yeats. From Annan Academy 
he went to Edinburgh University and there entered upon a 
secluded, laborious life of which we have but a scant rec- 
ord. Shy and timid, he kept himself from the eyes of the 


Scotch Traits in Thomas Carlyle 25 


public and toiled steadily on at his own work, the forma- 
tive influences of home and school Shaping him all the 
while for his future destiny. 

At an early age, and with a somewhat silent, contempla- 
tive disposition, he found himself setting out into the sea 
of life which fairly teemed with Scotch influences. Around 
him moved men in secular pursuits ‘“who were argumenta- 
tive, clear-headed, sound-hearted, rather conceited and 
contentious, shrewd, humorous; who possessed, to a re- 
markable degree, a great deal of human sense and polite- 
ness, who, of all men, were filled with a most ardent 
longing for all things spiritual.” Men who, like Sir Wal- 
ter Scott, would not take tefuge behind some plausible 
deceit, but who had the moral courage to see their property 
swept forever away from them in meeting their obligations, 
and then to work doggedly until every requirement was 
met; who, like Knox, could endure the galley slave’s 
bench, or boldly refute queens for their conscience’s sake ; 
who, with passionate, imaginative hearts, could sing like 
the immortal Burns or utter denunciations more flerce 
against that which was false than those which the Hebrew 
prophet Elijah uttered against the untruthful priests of 
Baal; who, perhaps of all men, recognized most clearly 
the hand of God working in all things. In speaking of 
their religious life, and especially of their places of wor- 
ship, Carlyle says: ‘‘In their lowly, rude, rustic, bare 
meeting-houses were sacred lambencies, tongues of authen- 
tic fire, which kindled all that was best in man and fanned 
it into a living flame.” 

Out of college, study for the ministry and teaching 
Claimed his attention. . Neither of these occupations pleased 
him, however, and after a two-years’ trial he decided to 
give them up. 

At this same time another power was brought to bear 


' upon his life which we cannot overlook. That was the 


lasting friendship formed with the afterwards famous di- 
vine, Kdward Irving. To him Carlyle owes much of his 


26 University Magazine 


sticcess, as it was at that period of his early manhood, when 
he was by no means ‘‘sanguine and diffusive, but rather 
biliary, sarcastic, and intense,” that the fine, manly, so- 
cial, good, natured, young teacher and minister drew him 
into his own heart and there fostered him on the best that 
he could afford. His conversation was helpful, and his li- 
brary was stored with books which suited the peculiar tem- 
perament of Carlyle’s mind and furnished it with a vast store 
of food, quickly digested and assimilated and in later years 
called into active, telling service. 

These were the influences which shaped the man whose 
oracular utterances were, for several long years, awaited 
with eager expectation throughoutall England. They acted 
upon the shy, meditative, dyspeptic youth, who “‘ felt out of 
place even in his own house,” and formed the basis of a life 
which was wonderfully productive of great works. Upon 
this foundation he built his massive, towering superstruct- 
ure to which we will briefly refer. 

We now look to the Carlyle of mature years to see in 
what respect he bears the stamp of a true Scotchman—we 
look to Carlyle the worker. Work claimed him as her own 
child. ‘T‘he brief, clear ring of his father’s trowel taught 
him that idleness was not for him, but rather, hard, unre- 
lenting toil. Nothing, he says, was ever accomplished 
without work, and only that could last which was the pro- 
duct of earnest, concentrated effort. The bridges which 
rose under his father’s hand stood for a definite amount of 
muscle, tissue and sweat. 

Work, moreover, in order to be lasting and beneficial, 
must also be true. The same loathing for sham, which 
caused his father to abandon the mason’s trade, made Car- 
lyle cry out in thunderous tones against untruth and incon- 
sistency. The French Revolution and the great political 
upheavals in England furnished him undeniable proofs that 
that which was false had to be eradicated in order that 
truth might spring up in its place, He held that relations 
between the governing and governed had to be sound, otle- 


Scotch Traits in Thomas Carlyle 27 


erwise strife and arms were inevitable. Luther, thoroughly 
manned with a truth, marched against the stronghold of 
Popery—of sham—and with it brought destruction to cant 
and hollow show. Cromwell, true to himself and the peo- 
ple of his native England, rose in arms against his king— 
the embodiment of weakness and insincerity, and forced 
hint to the execution block. Napoleon, as long as he was 
true to his principles, brought empires to his feet; when he 
became false to them and allowed ambition to dominate his 
life, saw his kingdoms fall’ forever from his powerless 
grasp. 

It was this element of his nature which, coupled with a 
remarkable depth of insight, fitted Carlyle for the duties 
of literary critic. He never stopped short of the bottom of 
a subject in his investigations, and then never failed to give 
the approval or disapproval which he thought it deserved. 
Truth could not be sacrificed by him, no matter what the 
consequences. ‘‘Uncompromising to himself,” says Pan- 
coast, “he was always uncompromising towards others,” 
and, like some stern judge, looked upon the thing itself and 
did not allow himself to be blinded by outward appearances. 
For that reason the veneered, insincere Byron met with 
his bitter scorn, while the passionate, firey-hearted, sincere, 
though misguided, Burns met with his richest praise. 

To be most beneficial, Carlyle said work had to be car- 
ried out according to some definite, unifying plan. It was 
for the lack of such a purpose that Burns failed to make 
the most of life and that his end was one of deep sorrow. 
He vainly ‘attempted to mingle, in friendly union, the 
common spirit of the world with the spirit of poetry, which 
is of a far different nature. No man formed as he was can 
be anything by halves.” Thus he defeated his own ends 
and set limits to his effectiveness which were perhaps not 
nearly so extended as they they could have been. Profiting 
by this example, and by that of Milton who devoted the 
best of his manhood to literary preparation, Carlyle 
set himself to work in one field, and then labored 


D3) Oniversity Magazine 


doggedly and untiringly. It was this singleness of 
purpose that held him in the seclusion of Craigenput- 
toc and Chelsea and caused him to look with disdain 
upon that which attempted to lure him from his true, laud- 
able work. ‘The mere fact, that men in general spent 
their forces in different ways, did not influence him in his 
course. He heeded not the voice of the public, but with an 
active will and the strength of a giant applied himself to 
his task. ‘This voice was incapable of furthering his un- | 
dertakings. ‘‘He who had the approval of his own con- . 
science and the favor of God, need not concern himself with 
what his unthinking fellows tnhought.” 

The estimate he placed upon man generally was ex- 
tremely low, and can possibly be stated in the words which 
he puts into the mouth of his old teacher as he sums up the 
worth of his scholars: ‘‘ Nothing good is to be expected 
from you or from those you come of, but we must get the 
best you have and not complain.” Only the few had any- 
thing worth striving after. Many whom the world called 
great, and to whom it yielded its greatest praise, were val- 
ued but at little by him. In one sentence, to which we 
may justly take exception, he gives his opinion of the great 
religious teacher, Henry Drummond: ‘‘I have heard him; 
I learned neither good nor evil from'him.” Note his humor- 
ous description of a city by midnight: ‘‘Five hundred 
thousand two-legged anmiails are lying there in a horizon- 
tal position with night caps on and their heads filled with 
all kinds of fanciful dreams!” ‘The voice of sucha throng 
was nothing more to him than the passing of an empty 
cloud—soon gone forever. Butone in a million gave a 
message worth receiving, 

As a natural consequence the social life of London was 
utterly insipid to him. Nothing was to be learned from 
the whimsical, shallow, superficial ‘‘ flunkies” who nightly. 
gave their elegant soirees and spread out their elaborate, 
empty feasts of vanities. Time spent in such ‘‘idiocy” 
was time lost. An evening at home with his wife anda 


Scotch Traits in Thomas Carlyle 29 


home friend, such as Leigh Hunt or Tennyson, was worth 
infinitely more and did not require nearly so great a sacri- 
fice of interest and pleasure. 

However, despite his sternness and seeming misanthropy 
towards the world at large, there is-to be found in him a 
marked vein of sympathy and love. His father and mother, 
although unlearned and poor, never once failed to receive 
from him the respect and affection which was their due. 
To Edward Irving, the friend of his young manhood, he 
never proved false, but stood nobly by him when London 
had turned her cruel back upon him. ‘The strong, stern 
man of suffering frequenty left ‘“‘Sham” and the ‘‘ Gos- 
pel of Dirt” to themselves and turned with a deep feeling 
of compassion to those who were struggling to accomplish 


‘Something in the hard, bitter world. As he viewed the 


life of Burns, with its holy ambitions, its pitfalls, and 
doubts, he grieved that it had not been in his power to lend 


him ahelpinghand. Again, as he followed the doubt-tossed 


Teufelsdréckh through his strong progress from the ‘*Hiver- 
lasting No” to the ‘Everlasting Yea,” he could not but 
speak through the ideal image of himself, words of pro- 


found sympathy to all inquirers after truth - ‘*Poor, wan- 


dering, wayward man! Art not thou tired and beaten with 
stripeseven asl am? Even whether thou bear the Royal 
mantie or the Beggar’s gaberdine—art thou not so weary, 
so heavy laden: and thy bed of Rest is but a grave. Oh my 


_ Brother, my Brother, why cannot I shield thee in my bosom 


and wipe away all tears from thy eyes!” 
One word more. In Carlyle the Hero Worshipper and 
Calvinistic Sceptic we discover the resultant of Several pri- 


_ mary, orelementary forces. His idea of the Hero and of 


God would not seem to spring from his early teaching. In 
trying to be practical, and in endeavoring to have but one 
purpose, he overlooks another important teaching, namely, 
that every individual has an immortal, priceless soul, In 
trying to think freely and still hold to the Calvanistic 


doctrines, his spiritual ideas become rather entangled and 


en 


30 University Magazine 


are not what we might wish them to be. In his eyes the 

great mass of men counted for too little. Only the few 

strong men were worthy of respect and capable of leader-. 
ship. Such men were to be the rulers, the heroes; the 
worthless, unthinking throng was to be despotically 

ruled by them. 

After one long, agonizing fight with doubt, a conflict in 
which modern Rationalism opposed Calvinistic teaching, 
his belief assumed one, definite, unchanging form. To him 
God was the great, all powerful spirit who pervades the 
universe and rules all things. Christ was but a great hero — 
whose life represented the spiritual ideal for man. He was 
not sent to save the world,—God did not care so much for 
mankind as to make such a stipreme sacrifice. 

In rough outline, Carlyle,the Annandale youth,surround- 
ed by Scotch influences, and Carlyle, the great rugged, 
seer of the English nation, stand> before us. On one side 
is the youth of Knox’s Presbyterian, free-thinking Scot- 
land, with its deep religious life; on the other the strange 
sceptic, who, though savoring of modern Rationalism, has 
settled for all time his doubts and firmly believes in an all- 
wise God and a ruling Providence. The shy meditative 
youth of Ecclefechan emerges as the great, bold thinker, 
or rather, the oracle of London. He who taught himself 
to turn a deaf ear to the voice of the multitude and to heed 
only those who could teach, dismisses with a sentence 
those whom the unthinking world calls great, and in soli- 
tude seeks and finds knowledge. Yonder in the Edinburgh 
library of Irving, poring over the works of Geothe and the 
winged and piercing sarcasm of Gibbon, sat the young 
student who was to sit as a true, impartial, far-seeing critic 
of literature and men, who was to paint, with wonderfully 
graphic, scrutinizing pen, portraits of Cromwell and Luther, 
which fairly burnt their way into the minds of men. The 
heart which revolted at sham and pretence, and which 
poured bitter scorn and fierce, scathing denunciation upon 
those who wotked deceit, goes out in tender yearning for 


Lest 31 


the down-trodden, despairing soul which struggles and 
battles honestly through the harsh, grinding world. The 
boy who was taught to esteem truth, whose birthright was 
to work, devotes himself body and soul to a literary career 
and despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles sticks, 
with Scottish persistence, to his task, and ever working as 
in the sight of his maker, rears for himself a glorious, 
precious monument which shall endure even when the mor- 
tar and granite of his father’s art shall have fallen into 
forgotten decay. 


REST. 
A TRANSLATION. 


Rest is not quitting this busy career, 

Rest is the fitting of self to its sphere ; 

"Tis the brook’s motion, clear without strife, 
Fleeing to ocean after its life; 

Tis loving and serving the Highest and Best; 
*Tis onward, unswerving,—that is true rest. 


AN ETCHING. 


BY MINNA CURTIS BYNUM. 


ing slowly along the narrow path with her hands full 

of brilliant leaves, looking in the autumn radiance like 
some white lily with crimson leaves all around. The red au- 
tumn sun shot one last lingering ray straight through the 
glory of trees about her, lighting up her face with a 
strange, transcendent light, like the golden halo of some 
mediaeval saint. 

He wondered, as he stood aside to let her pass, whether 
there would be any hesitation and coyness, any shy half 
dropping of the eyelids, any covert side glances from the 
erey eyes as she passed by. The handsome, silent profes- 
sor was accustomed to such recognitions of his presence 
from his adorers. But he grew ashamed of the thought as 
she let her gray eyes meet his calmly, steadily and with a 
sweet, grave recognition of his presence. 

She had passed by, he remembered, with only a slight in- 
clination of the head, leaving him standing in the road 
alone, in the darkness she and the sun had left behind. 
That was all, but the professor’s mind had travelled back 
ten years to another wood, when a woman had looked at him 
steadily with just such grave, gray eyes. He drew a long 
breath of pain as he thought of the earnest face with the 
trusting eyes and sweet, unsmiling mouth. 

“Tf I had never known ”—he said ina half whisper, 
with a queer little touch of pain in his voice—‘‘if she had 
only let me think her true!” 

He stood there in the gathering darkness in a silence ap- 
palling in its intensity, thinking in a vague, disconnected 
fashion of that summer’s idyl that had ended as summer 
idyls do. ‘Then hismind hastened back to the stern, Saint- 
like figure that had caused his reverie. 


if. was in the forest that he first met her. She was com- 


